»Novels don’t usually contain so much infinity. A major novel of ideas from one of our most enjoyable contemporary authors.« Clemens J. Setz
»The most extraordinary novel of 2026... phenomenal new writing from Austria... this book really blew me away! « Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»Terrific... “Schleifen” is a huge game. « Frankfurter Rundschau
».. ludicrous and ingenious… Wittgenstein on ecstasy… witty and brilliant… and one of the most exciting texts on the subject of fake news that I have ever read! « Austrian Society for Literature
Franziska Denk grows up in the orbit of the Vienna Circle, and suffers as a child from a peculiar illness: she immediately develops any symptom she hears or reads about.
The young Franziska finds a soulmate in Otto Mandl, a brilliant mathematician, and learns to immunise herself against her affliction using words from dead languages. The pair develop an absolute obsession with language, and embark on a search together for the perfect language – a search that takes them to all imaginable limits.
«Schleifen» is a great, an astute novel about power and the influence of language on our lives, which is also genuinely fun to read. In Elias Hirschl’s writing, the sheerly impossible constantly turns out to be true – and the rest is extremely skilfully imagined.
